


Eyes

by RedOrchid



Series: Picture of A Man [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: picture of a man, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-16
Updated: 2008-12-16
Packaged: 2017-12-10 20:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedOrchid/pseuds/RedOrchid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All his life, people had been obsessed with Harry's eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eyes

All his life, people had been obsessed with Harry's eyes. Nearly everyone he knew, as well as a great number of complete strangers, had at one time or another made a comment on how unique they were, or how deeply green, or—most commonly—how they were exactly like his mother’s. He had never understood it, that fascination with white and green, with two orbs in the middle of a face, serving their purpose well enough, but without any discernible special powers.

Until now.

There was no logic to it, to how a combination of such little, insignificant things—irises, lashes, black pupils and specks of white—could draw you in so completely. Nothing to explain how the colour of autumn sky could make you lose your breath or forget where you were going or what you had meant to say just a few seconds before.

Perhaps it was in the details, that elusive, beckoning force—like in the replicas of Muggle paintings his aunt would put in gilded frames on the living room walls and his uncle would call ‘a bloody poncey waste of money’ under his breath. Beautiful gardens or ponds full of water lilies from afar, the paintings turned into a multitude of ordered chaos and a kaleidoscope of coloured brush strokes when you really looked at them. Up close like that, there was blue, and green and gold in those eyes, tiny specks of indigo where the pewter of the enclosing border began and a dark, deep greenish-grey just around the black centre. Once you had seen them up close, it was difficult to meet the silver-grey from afar and not think of everything concealed within the outward picture.

The colours were only a part of the mystery, however. People kept telling him that his eyes were the window to his soul (which always made him a bit uneasy, not to mention slightly worried that his soul would not look as pure or pretty as people seemed to think it should), but he had always considered this to be some sort of joke, or at least vastly exaggerated. He did not know if he believed it even now—a person’s soul was a deeply intricate thing after all—but he could no longer deny the feeling deep within his gut that told him that there were little pieces of that which made his object of study uniquely _him_ in the expressions painted on the grey canvas.

Perhaps the soul was out of reach, but the heart and mind were on ready display, eyes clouding in anger or widening slightly in fear or anticipation. There would be a glint of humour or a narrowing of suspicion—or that slight dilation of the pupils that told him that, maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t mad for thinking these things after all. The grey eyes he spent so much of his time trying to decipher were subtle in their communication, but the things broadcast, the unsaid words, echoed so loudly in his head that he could no longer hear his surroundings for the buzzing, circling, ringing sensation of them.

So he walked through the corridors in a haze, following the glint of silver that appeared and went away again, making him quicken his steps before Potions and driving him to pull the curtains of his bed closed at night, just so he could trail the marked dot on his map with the tip of his finger whenever haunting dreams of grey would pull him out of sleep.

Obsession.

He was beginning to get it now.


End file.
